There is no arguing with these people. I tried recently (on this very subject) on another site. I asked if they would feel differently if it were their kid who had been locked up and abused and merely on suspicion of wrongdoing.
Check out this reply:
I certainly wouldn't feel the same if it were my kid... of course there are qualifiers:
1) My kid wouldn't be an American hating terrorist
2) My kid's parents wouldn't be American hating terrorists
3) My kid (God willing) would never be picked up as a POW fighting with a Taliban like regime who was actively supporting terrorist organizations.
4) My kid would be an American who is morally superior to Gitmo's occupants
5) I'd do my best to teach my kid that if he was to be picked up and put in jail mistakenly, it does not help his cause to pleasure himself infront of female guards and then throw the resulting bodily fluids on those guard - but if he did he'd deserve the beating he got for it whether he was in jail unjustly or not.
STICK A GLOWSTICK UP THAT!
Nice, huh? The comment thread finally degenerated to this:
Do you think it would be plausible to estimate how many of our Warriors have been killed in relation to the "loyal" opposition's clearly disingenuous opposition motivated simply for the regaining of the Oval Office?
You and I are disengenuous and killing U.S. soldiers, you see.
God, I hate these people.
You seem to have a elevated interest in the prospect of prison rape in Abu Gharib; as far as I've heard, there was none such - and if there was, I'd want the troops involved punished; not for violating the rights of the prisoners (have no rights, they are terrorists and have thus made themselves outlaws...look up the history of that word for full understanding of the term) - but because of the lack of good military discipline it entailed. This is not a playground game - this is a deadly serious business we are involved in; what would you do if you thought that a man in your custody knew where the next IED was to go off? More importantly - what wouldn't you do in order to obtain the information in time to defuse the bomb and save the lives of innocent people?
As an aside, I see you say that we've locked up Iraq's political leaders - actually, what we have locked up are people who usurped (quite illegally) the sovreign rights of the Iraqi people. Saddam was no more legitmately in charge of Iraq than I'm in charge of China - he was removable at will by any sovreign power which decided to take a hand. As it turned out, it was us - and we are now carrying out our responsibilities in restoring to the Iraqi people the sovreignty they of right have (we Americans are about "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed" or we are about nothing at all).
Mark:
First of all, I believe there are human rights which are not to be taken away no matter what a person does or is suspected of having done. I guess innocent until proven guilty does not apply to non-Americans. These prisoners have had no trial, and no sentencing. Because they are suspected of terrorism is not reason enough to strip them of their rights as humans no matter if that is the right thing to do or not. It is certainly not right to consider them lucky we haven't shot them in the head.
Secondly, there are several accounts of rape coming out of Abu Ghraib of POWs by American forces. There have been many more accounts of sexual abuse aside from actual rape and in some cases some of the torture has ended in death. What frustrates me most is you still act like that is not true, and you act like like even if it was, it is perfectly okay because they knew the concequences when they became terrorists. This is totally flawed. Like I said above, what about a trial to examine whether or not these people are actually terrorists? I understand when people say they are not Americans but since when has America decided it is only bad for people to not have a trial because in America that is wrong and not a human right.
So says us, when it comes to usurping. How many people in the world and in this nation (and on this website maybe) think George W. Bush usurped the rights of Americans? This happening in Iraq is just too touchy of a subject to approach on such a superficial level I guess. I wish we could devote a lot more discussion to it but there are a lot of issues important right now. You say we believe in governments deriving power from the consent of the governed. I just hope that happens someday in Iraq. Right now we are the Iraqi government and we derive our powers from superior firepower.